A year ago I made a post:
“Why not listen to my entire iTunes music library, sorted by track name, and see how long it takes?â€
I actually listened to all the music in my library again last November and December, not sorted in any way, I just made sure I listened to everything within a month.
Over the past few weeks I did something similar, and finished this morning. I listened to my iTunes music library, sorted by track length. I had a lot fun, certainly more than the previous times I’ve listened, as I’ve deleted all the duplicates, and got rid of lots of music I actually didn’t like.
At the end of my post about this last year I said: “I think I’ll now do it again, but sort by track length. I’ll start with the longest tracks, and end up with the shortest.” I forgot I wrote that though, and started with the shortest.
Some notes:
– The first track was a 5 second piece of silence which I use in my show.
– The last track ran 12:44, Slow Movement from the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack.
– Lots of short tracks are used on albums as filler bits between other tracks.
– Indie bands often have a minute long piece of music on an album.
– Sound track music can be any length. The final ten tracks were all sound track pieces or classical music.
– Techno, drum and bass, and other electronic music hardly showed up until I got to 5 minute-long tracks.
– Final tracks of albums are often artificially long, with a few minutes of silence before a “hidden” track.
– This method of sorting created a far more random mix that sorting by track name.
I don’t think I have much else to say about it. It’s just a fun project, and I recommend you do something similar. Album by album is good, but this way different tracks stand out.